


Ropes Course

by lyrisey



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Bisexuality, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Light BDSM, Personal Growth, Post-Golden Morning (Parahumans)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:53:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26191483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyrisey/pseuds/lyrisey
Summary: Taylor Hebert so loved the world that she lost herself in saving it.It's time she found herself again.(Not so much 'Smut' as it is 'Romance with kink elements'.)
Relationships: Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 93





	1. Taylor

It's early evening when she reaches The Balustrade, the building lights coming on with the dusk and highlighting the building's red brick facade and the faux-bronze sign naming the establishment in relieved capitals.

She pushes the door open, steps into warmth and gentle hubbub and the smoky fullness of coffee beans as she inhales; clocks eyes lifting to look at her and dropping away as people go back to their conversations.

She makes the mistake of asking the barista about their special, gets saddled with a cup of something inelectuably bohemian, and takes it to a small table with a single seat, as close to a corner as she can get.

She sits; she has a notebook, something to keep her hand busy, practicing her handwriting as she sits and watches the crowd.

It's not her first time here; she came in a week ago to check the place out, get a read on it, a feel for the regulars and the neighborhood.

_This is normal_ , she thinks. _Normal people do this. I'm just protecting myself_.

She sips her drink, winces at the taste of juniper, scrawls childlike lines in her notebook with an inexperienced hand.

The people coming in tonight are different from last week: more makeup on both the women and men, a trend away from the casual, splitting the difference between formalwear and fishnets and clothes that look like they've been through a knife fight.

There's more pride flags than she expects; something she's still not used to on this Earth, and in unfamiliar colors to boot: blue and black with hearts, honey browns to blacks with paw prints, cyan and magenta and yellow like a miscalibrated printer's proof.

She watches them come in, singletons and trios, people who wouldn't be out of place on her college campus, their easy greetings as they make their orders and disappear out a door that leads to the building's courtyard.

She follows them, feeling oddly tawdry in her jeans and shirt and coat.

* * *

"Is this your first time here? I haven't seen you around before."

She looks at the guy, the suit and the tie and the triple-teardrop-swirl pin on his lapel, his urbane polished _confidence_ and the part in his hair, and all the emotion drains out of her face like she's cut open a rent under her jaw.

"I have someone waiting for me," she says, watches the easy smile on his face stiffen into something she can't read as he nods, disengages.

She's nervous. She's protecting herself.

(She's _reacting_ , falling into old patterns that _shouldn't matter_ here.)

* * *

There's a table in the center of the courtyard; she finds an open bench, sits with shoulders hunched, watches gas flames lick up around coarse chunks of glass as she listens to strangers discuss bootblacking and the taste of juniper sits pungent in her mouth.

_This was a mistake_ , she thinks. She came here, looking for something, and she's found community, happy and busy and _alien_ all around her.

A community, but not for her.

"Hey, you found your way out."

She looks up as someone steps over the bench, sits down next to her: a girl about her age, brown hair down to her shoulders and lively eyes that spark gold in the firelight. Her clothes fall somewhere between casual and grunge, the kind of thing she could wear into a lecture hall and not stand out.

Her flannel shirt hangs open over a tank top, dark scarlet under navy plaid; around her neck a leather thong, a medallion done in polished enamel, loosely-clenched fists intricately bound with red cord.

She recognizes her from earlier; had watched her come in with a cohort of friends, friendly smiles and easy laughter.

"Hey."

They sit there in a shared, comfortable silence, watching two guys across the table take turns reaching into the fire and snatching up glass chunks like children's jacks.

There's no awkward press of conversation, no sidelong glances. She recognizes the feel of it, how she's being given space and the freedom to engage when she's ready for it.

She stares through the firelight-in-glass, feels the heat soak into her knuckles and the back of her hand.

"You do this a lot?" she finally asks, hating the words as they come out. Tension binds in her shoulders, more than she normally feels with the harness for her arm.

The girl doesn't laugh, doesn't giggle; she lets out a breathy little snort, but that's the extent of her amusement.

"Not that often," the girl says. "Their coffee's a little on the expensive side, and you wouldn't _believe_ the things they do to tea."

She feels a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth, lets out a little huff of a laugh. "Actually, I could," she says, and when she looks over, the other girl is smiling, loose and free like when she walked in the door of the Balustrade.

"Taylor," she says to the other girl.

"Cool. I'm Leah."


	2. Leah

I found Taylor in her usual spot: just outside Ann's Notations, dark hair falling around her face as she slotted course notes into an open binder.

"You know," I said, "I have some perfectly good notes I could loan you."

She looked up, saw me, and smiled as she tucked a fall of black curls behind one ear. "I've seen your handwriting, Lee; it's worse than mine." Her fingers thumped against photocopied pages. "And these are for EOC one-oh-four? You know, the class I'm helping you study fo-"

I huffed a little laugh. "I accept and acknowledge your point, and remain appreciative of your continued academic support."

Taylor snorted, mock-glared at me for a moment before leaning over her work again. "Brown-noser."

I let my backpack swing off my shoulder, pulled out the chair opposite hers, and sat. "Need a hand?"

"I'm almost done. Thanks."

Papers shuffled, binder rings clicked closed, and I watched as she repacked everything in her bag.

Someone watching the two of us would probably assume that we were, at best, acquaintances; two people, each putting up with the other's unfamiliarities for some common cause.

You know, coursemates. Study buddies.

And they wouldn't be wrong; Taylor _was_ helping me study. Hell, she was practically tutoring me in a class she didn't feel ready to test out of.

I just didn't think that the thing that first bound us together was...

Well.

Kink.

When I'd done Mark a favor and sat down next to our munches' latest visitation of deer-in-the-headlights, I honestly wasn't expecting much to come of it: take an hour, meet a new face, make sure she isn't alone while she decides our wonderful world of hemp and spankings isn't for her and goes back to more vanilla pursuits.

I wasn't expecting an introvert with a quiet voice and intent brown eyes.

I wasn't expecting her sense of humor, brisk and abrasive like salt on a winter road.

I wasn't expecting _Taylor_.

* * *

I watched as she finished packing her notes away and zipped up her bag, looked across the table at me.

"You have that quiz coming up next class. You studied, right?"

For a moment, we stared at each other.

My friend Alex compared her to a dam: featureless and brooding, but would inundate you if she ever opened up for you.

Nina just said she was 'hella ride-or-die', which struck me as a more accessible comparison. There was this sense that Taylor didn't make friends easily... but once she did, there was no way you were ready for her brand of caring.

"I did, actually. Last week. After the last time you reminded me." My tone was maybe a little more waspish than I intended, and I watched her face redden in response.

Her gaze met mine for a moment longer, then dropped down to her bag. "Sorry."

And the thing was, she _was_ sorry. After we'd met at the munch, found out we shared a college campus, classes?

Taylor had latched onto me with a kind of intensity that was almost uncomfortable: she'd had this attitude like she expected her friends to be _better_ , to live up to their potential...

Honestly, it was only the fact that she thought that the same logic applied to herself that made it kind of bearable, along with the fact that she was willing to listen when I talked to her about it, worked to give me space when I asked.

It made it oddly endearing, like a domesticated tiger mom.

I sighed, leaned back in my chair. "It's okay. Besides, if you hadn't reminded me about it last week, I wouldn't have studied in the first place-- no, don't look smug, we both did bad here."

Taylor still looked smug as she pulled the strap of her bag over her shoulder, looked over at me. "Come on. I don't want to make you late."

"And waste all that perfectly good studying? Horrors."

We got up, started threading their way out of the crowded hallways of the student union.

"So, uh." We sidestepped around clots of students, pushed through doors into the open air of the campus. "How'd your 'date' with Gabe go?"

"Fine," Taylor said, and it was in the tone of voice someone uses when something _isn't_ fine.

I glanced over at her as we walked. "You wanna talk about it?"

Taylor didn't say anything for a moment, her thumbnail picking at the strap on her bag. "You have a quiz in ten minutes," she finally said. "You shouldn't be distracted for that."

My lips flattened into a thin line. "All right. I'll go, and I'll take my quiz, and you can wait for me out here, and _then_ we can talk about whatever's bugging you, okay?"

She hesitated. Nodded. I tried to smile as I turned to head for class.

* * *

The quiz wasn't going great. My brain wanted to chew over hypotheticals: not on the course material, but about what had Taylor bothered.

_What could have caused her to go all pillbug and close up like this?_

_She started acting weird when she brought up the solo thing with Gabe. Was it something to do with him?_

I thought back to how Gabe had offered when he'd heard Taylor had been looking for a play partner.

How Taylor had asked me about him, and I'd said 'as far as I know, he's okay.'

I remembered checking in on them that first time, when they'd just started scening.

_Fuck. What if I fucked up?_

_What if he's a fucking creeper or something and I wasn't paying attention and Taylor was_ alone _with him and... and..._

I stared down at the empty bubbles of my scantron, and had no answers.

* * *

When I came out of my classroom twenty minutes later, I found Taylor sitting on a park bench, doing clumsy macrame knotwork on rope as thick as her fingers: her way of practicing dexterity and manipulation with her off-hand.

I dropped down onto the bench next to her; watched her fingers still as her gaze searched mine.

"Leah? Are you-"

"No," I interrupted. "Don't make this about me, don't... don't _deflect_. Something's bothering you, and that means it's... I'm worried about you."

Taylor's face twisted, an emotion I couldn't identify; I took a deep breath.

"Taylor... are you okay?"

The only sound was the soft scratch of her thumbnail, picking at the twist of rope in her hand.

"Did something happen when you were with Gabe?"

Her picking stilled, her eyes met mine, and I had that sense, that I'd hit the mark right on the head.

I reached over, put my hand on Taylor's. "Do you want to talk about it?"

And that's when she did The Thing.

It was something I'd seen Taylor do before: her face went still, almost placid as she stared at things without seeing them.

I'd done a little diligence, a little digging, more research than our psych class needed that week; I knew it was a stress response, something Taylor did when there were Difficult Things, when there was pressure on her.

I squeezed her hand; she turned her head, looked through me.

"Hey. It's okay. We don't have to talk about it here. Or now."

Her mask creased, a frown. She blinked, refocused, looked at me.

"Taylor..." Her expression didn't change as she watched me. "Look. I know we have our rough spots, but you're my friend, okay? I trust you, and if you have something to talk about... I'm on your side."

The words chipped away at her, pulled at the tension in her shoulders until they slumped.

And Taylor looked at me, met my gaze with tired brown eyes.

"I'm just... having second thoughts. About where I fit in all this."

 _In all this kink stuff_ , I thought.

Her fingers flexed under mine.

"I had the thing with Gabe the other night. Some scene stuff, topping him and..."

She trailed off, her mouth twisted around something bitter.

"...we got into things, and it was... he was enjoying himself, I was doing good, but... we got to the end and I realized I wasn't _feeling anything_."

She pulled her hand from under mine. "It felt like work. Work I was good at, but it... it wasn't me. It felt like I was faking it."

The words came out, heavy with shame and guilt.

"I don't know if. If all this is _me_."

"Taylor-"

Her hand came back, fingertips brushing mine. "Lee... can we still be friends? Even if this isn't my thing?"

We were friends. But there was something _more_ here, a naked ache in her voice, in her eyes, like she'd torn a bandage off an old wound that had never healed.

And then the mask came back, just a little, and Taylor looked at me, and asked "That's okay, right?"

I tried to smile for her. "You're my friend. How we met doesn't change who we are to each other."

I watched her relax, saw a poorly-hidden flash of relief cross her face.

I thought about Taylor.


	3. Taylor

"So... yeah. She said we were still friends."

_At least I still have that_ , I thought.

"And how's it been going, since you discussed this with her?"

I looked down at my hands, to where warm fingers squeezed cool silicone, the most expensive stress ball I've ever owned.

"Have you talked with her again?"

"...no," I finally said, and my therapist _hmmed_ in quiet acknowledgment.

"Why do you think that is?"

"Because... things have changed?"

I said it like a question, but it really wasn't; things _had_ changed when I'd talked with Leah. Even if we were still friends, the _way_ we were friends had changed. When we talked again, our conversations would take different shapes, avoid certain... topics.

We were still connected, but the nature of that connection had changed with what I'd shared.

Things had changed, and I didn't know the shape they'd take.

"Sometimes," my therapist said, "when we feel unwanted, we pull away from the people we're close with. It seems counterintuitive, to respond to isolation with isolation... but many times, it's an attempt to find validation, affirmation. A way of telling yourself 'if they really cared, they'd notice I'm alone and come to me.'"

* * *

It was drizzling when I got on the bus, light rain dampening my hoodie and making my glasses fog up; I blindly swiped my fare card and made my way to a seat, felt the bus rock underneath me as it picked up speed.

I leaned back, felt my head touch cool glass.

Class should've been weighing on my mind: there was a paper draft due next week that I needed to start on, but I couldn't focus on it.

_When we feel unwanted, we pull away from the people we're close with._

I felt like a riverbed, worn smooth by the passage of dark water; my therapist had reached down, took a handful of me, sediment trickling from his fingers to hang around me, murky and thick.

I knew about this; remembered Mrs. Yamada and our discussions, how sometimes, we needed space to process the conclusions we reach during sessions.

Remembered how Mom had died and Dad and I had just... stopped. How we'd both suffered loss, split apart like a log for the headsman's practice.

_Isolation with isolation._

Something similar had happened with Emma, with school; pain happened and I retreated, isolated - partly to protect myself, but there was that perverse desire to be _seen_. To have my absence noticed, commented on.

Was it all happening again? College wasn't high school, but I could easily see similarities: the academic environment, the structure, socializing with my peers.

Loss, raising its ugly head again.

What made it worse, though? This was something I'd never expected to have.

I'd made my peace, thought I'd found an ending... and then I'd woken up here.

A chance to try again. To be normal.

I hadn't had that, before. High school was something I'd never had the chance to fix; I'd started running in search of easier problems, found them in the form of warlords and Wards, Endbringers and Slaughterhouses and being the fulcrum the world leaned on when it broke apart in a flash of gold.

There's a sharp _hiss_ as the doors open to let someone on, and I realize I'm sweating, damp in my palm and the small of my back that can't be blamed on the rain.

I look out the window: next stop's mine.

As the bus doors close, as we lurch back into motion, I rub my hand on my pants.

Take out my phone.

_Hey_ , I text Leah. _You doing anything tonight?_

My phone buzzed in my hand, a response.

_Noooo_   
_Roomie's having a date night_   
_So I am consigned to durance vile le sadface_

I snorted, started typing with one thumb.

_Study session at my place?_

Lee's only response was a joyous torrent of emoticons; I smiled, looked up, and realized I'd missed my stop.

* * *

I thought having Leah over would help.

I was wrong.

_We_ were wrong; still friends, sharing a table, still _talking_ about class things and material, but it still felt like something was off in the way she was treating me.

I looked down at my textbook, at the notes I had, realized I'd read a paragraph without any idea of what it said... and it wasn't the first time I'd done that tonight.

"Okay." Leah flipped her textbook closed, tossed it on the table with a _thump_. "Study break."

"It's been twenty minutes."

She looked at me across the table, tired brown eyes a match for mine. "Yeah, but neither of us have actually been studying."

I breathed out, let the air hiss between my teeth. "Fine."

She didn't look away. "Taylor... is everything okay?"

Notes. Notes were a safe thing to look at, down on the table. "...I was going to ask you the same thing," I said, and listened to her exhale, a long-drawn-out _whoof_.

I lifted my head, watched her eyebrows furrow as she watched me. "There was something I wanted to a- well, talk to you about," Leah finally said.

"About what?" My tone was neutral, didn't reflect the tension I felt.

She shifted in her chair: pulled a knee up to her chest, wrapped her arms around it. "...last time we talked, you said you weren't sure if this was for you. The kink stuff."

My mouth was dry. "You said we could still be friends. Even if it wasn't my thing."

"That hasn't changed," she said; I watched her smile, tried not to read unease into the wavering corners of her mouth.

"It feels like it has."

She rubbed at her face, combed fingers back through her hair. "I'm sorry. It's just..."

I folded left arm over right, pulled both against me.

Gave her space.

Let her talk.

She looked at me, eyes strangely bright amid dark-smudged liner. "After we talked, I... something was bothering me, and it took me a while to work out why."

I listened to the silence, to the faint wash of noise from cars on the road outside.

"And then... after I'd worked out the why, I wasn't sure what to _do_ \- you'd made your choice about what you'd wanted, and I want to respect that but..."

She trailed off. Pulled in a breath.

Let it out.

"Taylor. I'm saying this as your friend, okay? I like you. I respect you, respect the choices you make... but I've been going over things in my head, and it doesn't add up. There's... something I don't think you were considering."

I tapped my thumb against my arm, watched Leah's eyes flit and fix on the motion.

"What didn't I consider, Lee?" My voice was quiet, distant in my ears, and I watched how my words brought tension into her shoulders, into her arms.

Watched how she looked at me and looked _miserable_.

"Taylor... I'm only going to say this once. And then I'm going to drop it. You can tell me I'm full of shit, blow me off, and that'll be the end of it. We'll be friends who find other things to talk about."

She swallowed. "...or not be friends at all, if that's what you need."

"Okay," I said. Realized I had to say more as her eyes widened. "I mean, go ahead. I'm listening."

Relief bloomed across her face. "Okay! Okay." I tried to smile, to show her that I understood. That I knew, that I _appreciated_ how important our friendship was to her.

"You get hungry, Taylor." Her dark eyes watched mine. "Like when you tagged along to that flogging demo, and looked like you were memorizing every detail."

She wasn't wrong: I remembered the sound as deerskin falls fell on flesh, that wet-chamois _thwack_ and the gasp of breath as someone's hide was tanned.

"You're not the only person who gets like that." She looked down at her hands. "I see it in you because I've seen it in our friends. In myself."

I shifted, uneasy, because... she was right. I remembered standing next to Leah, watching as her fingers traced bundles of bamboo-silk cordage, how her cheeks flushed like apples on a winter's day and how it mirrored the warmth I felt.

She was inescapably _right_ , and I didn't know where that went.

"I..." her fingers twisted about each other, and she glanced up at me. "Taylor, have you ever tried being submissive?"

I hated the sound that came out of me, a short, sharp, _dismissive_ bark of laughter before I saw the look on her face, before I forced myself to stop.

"You're serious." I watched her nod. "Lee, _nobody_ thinks I'm a sub, unless you count the skeevos that come around and insist 'you can only understand True Domination by kneeling at my side'."

I tried to put a twist to the words, tried to make them _funny_ , turn them into the joke they were so Leah could laugh and play along.

Only she didn't. She sat there, watched me, let my words fizzle out between us.

"Taylor... I don't think we've ever seen you as anything other than a top. You've got... um. That 'mega ice queen bitch' energy. It's... I think it's a big part of why Gabe was crushing on you, and I don't think any of us questioned how you presented yourself."

She tried a smile, nervous, a flicker of a thing that came and flitted away. "You've always been a top to us, because we never let you be anything else."

The words sat with me, tumbled in my head.

_We never let you be anything else._

"...I mean, it's a hypothesis," I finally said. "So, how were you thinking of testing it?"

* * *

Leah set her laptop down in front of me, a grey-black rectangle decorated with a neon decoupage of Lisa Frank stickers. Opened the screen, reached over my shoulder to log in.

I averted my eyes. "I have a rule, Lee. No porn at the kitchen table."

"One, you don't; two, I'm not gonna make you watch porn." Her voice was soft, warm, amused, and I hummed noncommittally, watching as she navigated folders, stopped on a video.

"You ready?"

"Not porn?"

"Educational material only."

I huffed, a soft little explosion of a sigh. "Okay. Hit me."

She opened the video, pulled it fullscreen, and we watched as someone offscreen started to loop and knot rope around a girl in a turtleneck and jeans.

"Educational," I murmured, and heard Leah sniff.

"Just... watch. Tell me what you're thinking about, what interests you in what you see."

* * *

We were three demonstration videos in before I finally started talking.

"She looks... safe." I watched the girl rock slightly, swaying as her partner hooked a finger under rope and tugged. "Happy," I said quietly. "Like she's being taken care of."

I could feel Leah sitting next to me: the warmth from her skin, the smell of her, faded deodorant and fabric softener. Comforting, like warm laundry fresh from the dryer.

"Taylor." Leah's voice was gentle, present; there, but not a distraction. "Would you like to be tied up like that?"

And without really thinking, lost in the flow of the moment, I murmured "...yeah."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was kind of a challenge for me. 
> 
> Leah's attitude towards Taylor's decision isn't one I'm entirely comfortable with; I suspect a lot of my readers will have had some point in their lives where someone tries to second-guess an element of their identity, whether that be something in the realm of kink, sexuality, or even gender, and found some measure of alienation in their saying 'you said you were X, but are you -really?-'
> 
> I've tried to earmark that this is something Leah does after a lot of soul-searching and looking at 'how do I suggest this without undermining Taylor's decision about -her- identity and desires?' - that it comes from a place of love and affirmation, to strengthen an identity instead of undermining it.


End file.
